Weeping Angels - Empty room in blink

The Doctor was waiting for him in the commissary.

Around him, the revellers danced and swayed, a room built for thousands now pathetically vacant but for the last colonists of a dying world. The wine was gone, the plates scattered, and the music crackled through speakers that were only ever meant to direct doctors to those they were trying to save.

(...)

‘You’re not safe. You were never safe. It was just saving you till last.’

Perinne blinked sweat from his eyes, and in that moment every reveller took off their masks.

There was Lieutenant Rozz, her features pale and dusty white, and a hundred interns whose names he’d never bothered to learn, grinning with mouths of sharp and shapeless teeth. And the Magentress, and his secretary, and a thousand others, all staring up at him with empty marble eyes.

(...)

‘I won’t inflict this on the universe,’ Perinne said. ‘I’m a doctor too. Now go.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the Doctor said, and the pain in his eyes told Perinne that something of Gehanna had entered him all the same, that he was going to carry remorse with him wherever he went. ‘I’m so sorry.’

He disappeared into his blue box and, with a grinding of hidden gears, the TARDIS faded away. When it was gone Chief Medical Officer Perinne was alone, with the patients he had failed. He stared at the Angels for as long as he was able … and then blinked. When his eyes opened again, the box had gone, and so had the Angels.

All but one.

Half its face was missing. One of its wings. He had thought … he had thought he would find living tissue underneath. Something he could learn from. Something he could use.

***

Twelve Angels Weeping, Grey Matter